Microsoft CRM Implementation in São Paulo

Microsoft CRM Implementation in São Paulo – notes for Consultant

By Andrew Karasev

Alba Spectrum Technologies

São Paulo 55-11-3444-4949, USA 1-866-528-0577, 1-630-961-5918, help@albaspectrum.com

Contrary to Microsoft Business Solutions, or now Microsoft Dynamics MRP/ERP products: Navision, Axapta, Great Plains, Solomon – Microsoft CRM or Microsoft Dynamics CRM is CRM product, which Microsoft promotes in all the countries worldwide. Brazil is no exception. However we should admit that MS CRM is relatively new product for the Brazilian ground and the number of installations is not high. This is why we would like to recommend you to come directly to our Sao Paulo office, so we could demo you MS CRM in live production environment – we use it for our company worldwide office, and we host it in our Sao Paulo office. Plus we do MS CRM SDK development works from Sao Paulo, where Boris Makushkin is leading our MS CRM customization group. Here we would like to describe the functions and processes.

Sales Module. All begins with the lead registration in CRM. Lead could be reassigned to specific sales or technical person, or shared – this is in the case when we plan to deploy consulting group or team. Then lead is transferred to the Opportunity/Account (or closed/disqualified). When lead is converted to the Account – you begin Quoting process. Quote should be printed (from MS CRM Outlook client – where you can have Print Quote for Customers mail merge scenario). When Quote is transferred to Order and order is submitted – Microsoft CRM – Great Plains connector creates Customer record in Great Plains automatically, plus the Order in Sales Order Processing module of Microsoft Great Plains. If you need MS CRM Great Plains integration customization – we do BizTalk programming for the integration tool.
Contract Management / Service Module. In our case we log our consultants and developers time to MS CRM. In order to produce structured reporting we follow the procedure: create contract for the customer, create contract lines, activate contract / invoice contract, create contract line cases, assign cases to developers and have developers log the time in the form of MS CRM tasks or appointments. Then simple SQL view shows the consultant time report in the form of Crystal Report or MS SQL Reporting Services report (MS CRM 3.0)
Lotus Notes / Domino. We do not use IBM Lotus Notes in our production environment in Sao Paulo, however we do use Domino in our production environment in Germany and Russia – Moscow office. We have Microsoft CRM – IBM Lotus Notes Domino connector for Lotus Notes 6.0 and higher and MS CRM 1.2 and 3.0. The connector provides email messaging through Domino plus it enable you to protect Lotus Notes user licenses – we synchronize Lotus and MS CRM calendar events – appointments, tasks, phone calls, faxes, etc.
MS CRM Customizations. Microsoft inaugurates you to customize MS CRM – if you stick to Microsoft CRM SDK – this is the set of object descriptions with code snap-ins in C# or VB.Net. You are discouraged to do direct MS SQL server scripting to update MS CRM database – instead you are encouraged to program your customization via XML web services.
Microsoft CRM Upgrade 1.2 -> 3.0. We realized that Microsoft CRM clients do so-called ‘self-implementation’ and this is natural way – MS CRM uses all the spectrum of recent Microsoft technologies: MS Exchange, MS SQL, Full-text search, MS Message Queue, Active Directory. If you have extensive customization – you might need external consultant help.

Please do not hesitate to call or email us: São Paulo 55-11-3444-4949, USA 1-866-528-0577, 1-630-961-5918 help@albaspectrum.com

Andrew Karasev is Chief Technology Officer at Alba Spectrum Technologies ( http://www.albaspectrum.com ) - Microsoft Business Solutions Great Plains, Navision, Axapta, MS CRM, Oracle Financials and IBM Lotus Domino Partner, serving corporate customers in the following industries: Aerospace & Defense, Medical & Healthcare, Distribution & Logistics, Hospitality, Banking & Finance, Wholesale & Retail, Chemicals, Oil & Gas, Placement & Recruiting, Advertising & Publishing, Textile, Pharmaceutical, Non-Profit, Beverages, Conglomerates, Apparels, Durables, Manufacturing and having locations in multiple states and internationally.

We are serving USA Nationwide: CA, IL, NY, FL, AZ, CO, TX, WI, WA, MI, MA, MO, LA, NM, MN, Europe: Germany, France, Belgium, Poland, Russia, Middle East (Egypt, Saudi Arabia, OAE, Bahrain), Asia: China, Australia, New Zealand, Oceania, South & Central America: Mexico, Peru, Brazil, Venezuela, Columbia, Ecuador, Chili, Paraguay, Uruguay, Argentina, Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico